Recent Lecture — 2014 Naropa Institute
“Earth Democracy: Living as Earth Community” with Vandana Shiva, PhD

Vandana Shiva is an Indian environmental activist and anti-globalization author. Shiva, currently based in Delhi, has authored more than 20 books. She was trained as a physicist and received her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in philosophy from the University of Western Ontario, Canada, in 1978 with the doctoral dissertation “Hidden variables and locality in quantum theory.”

She is one of the leaders and board members of the International Forum on Globalization, (along with Jerry Mander, Edward Goldsmith, Ralph Nader, Jeremy Rifkin, et al.), and a figure of the global solidarity movement known as the alter-globalization movement. She has argued for the wisdom of many traditional practices, as is evident from her interview in the book Vedic Ecology (by Ranchor Prime) that draws upon India’s Vedic heritage. She is a member of the scientific committee of the Fundacion IDEAS, Spain’s Socialist Party’s think tank. She is also a member of the International Organization for a Participatory Society. She received the Right Livelihood Award in 1993, and numerous other prizes.  [from Wikipedia]

Vandana Shiva interviewed by David Barsamian Sept. 29, 2011

Publications list from Wikipedia:

• 1981,  Social Economic and Ecological Impact of Social Forestry in Kolar, Vandana Shiva, H.C. Sharatchandra, J. Banyopadhyay, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore
• 1986,  Chipko: India’s Civilisational Response to the Forest Crisis, J. Bandopadhyay and Vandana Shiva, Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage. Pub. by INTACH
• 1987,  The Chipko Movement Against Limestone Quarrying in Doon Valley, J. Bandopadhyay and Vandana Shiva, Lokayan Bulletin, 5: 3, 1987, pp. 19–25 online
• 1988,  Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Survival in India, Zed Press, New Delhi, ISBN 0-86232-823-3
• 1991,  Ecology and the Politics of Survival: Conflicts Over Natural Resources in India, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, California, ISBN 0-8039-9672-1
• 1992,  The Violence of the Green Revolution: Ecological degradation and political conflict in Punjab, Zed Press, New Delhi
• 1992,  Biodiversity: Social and Ecological Perspectives (editor); Zed Press, United Kingdom
• 1993,  Women, Ecology and Health: Rebuilding Connections (editor), Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation and Kali for Women, New Delhi
• 1993,  Monocultures of the Mind: Biodiversity, Biotechnology and Agriculture, Zed Press, New Delhi
• 1993,  Ecofeminism, Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, Fernwood Publications, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, ISBN 1-895686-28-8
• 1994,  Close to Home: Women Reconnect Ecology, Health and Development Worldwide, Earthscan, London, ISBN 0-86571-264-6
• 1995,  Biopolitics (with Ingunn Moser), Zed Books, United Kingdom
• 1997,  Biopiracy: the Plunder of Nature and Knowledge, South End Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, I ISBN 1-896357-11-3
• 2000,  Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply, South End Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, ISBN 0-89608-608-9
• 2000,  Tomorrow’s Biodiversity, Thames and Hudson, London, ISBN 0-500-28239-0
• 2001,  Patents, Myths and Reality, Penguin India
• 2002,  Water Wars; Privatization, Pollution, and Profit, South End Press, Cambridge Massachusetts
• 2005,  India Divided, Seven Stories Press,
• 2005,  Globalization’s New Wars: Seed, Water and Life Forms Women Unlimited, New Delhi, ISBN 81-88965-17-0
• 2005,  Earth Democracy; Justice, Sustainability, and Peace, South End Press, ISBN 0-89608-745-X
• 2007,  Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed, editor, South End Press ISBN 978-0-89608-777-4
• 2007,  Democratizing Biology: Reinventing Biology from a Feminist, Ecological and Third World Perspective, author, Paradigm Publishers ISBN 978-1-59451-204-9
• 2008,  Soil Not Oil, South End Press ISBN 978-0-89608-782-8
• 2010,  Staying Alive, South End Press ISBN 978-0-89608-793-4
• 2013,  Making Peace With The Earth Pluto Press ISBN 978-0-7453-33762

Monocultures of the Mind  (1993)
Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology
By Vandana Shiva
In this book Vandana Shiva, who has established herself as a leading independent thinker and voice of the South, brings together her thinking on the protection of biotechnology, and the consequences for agriculture of the global pre-eminence of Western-style scientific knowledge. She examines the current threats to the planet’s biodiversity and the environmental and human consequences of its erosion and replacement by monocultural production. She calls for a halt to the aid and market incentives to both large-scale destruction of habitats where biodiversity thrives and the introduction of centralised, homogeneous systems of cultivation.

Dr. Vandana Shiva

From Monocultures to Diversity, From Food Monopolies to Food Democracy

Ecofeminism (1993)   By Vandana Shiva and Maria Mies 
Two of Zed’s best-known authors, one an economist, the other a physicist and philosopher, come together in this book on a controversial environmental agenda. Using interview material, they bring together women’s perspectives from North and South on environmental deterioration and develop and new way of approaching this body of knowledge which is at once practical and philosophical. Do women involved in environmental movements see a link between patriarchy and ecological degradation? What are the links between global militarism and the destruction of nature? In exploring such questions, the authors criticize prevailing theories and develop an intellectually rigorous ecofeminist perspective rooted in the needs of everyday life. They argue for the acceptance of limits, the rejection of the commoditization of needs, and a commitment to a new ethics.

The Corporate Control of Life (1993)

100 Notes, 100 Thoughts

By Vandana Shiva

Indian physicist and activist Vandana Shiva addresses corporate biopiracy in which plants, for example, can be claimed as a corporation’s own invention. Shiva discusses the examples of the neem tree and basmati rice.